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Note added July 8: I have changed the title of this thread to reflect better what I am getting at. It took a while for me to think of a proper title. Even that is not quite right, but it will do. By "Italian Renaissance sources" I do not mean works written in the Italian Renaissance, but rather works that were of interest, for the most part, to people only during the Renaissance, enough so that paintings were made using them and other writers incorporated their teachings in their work.

Note added Oct. 4: I have revised this post so as to make the rationale, such as it is, for Christian's astrological assignments clearer at the end.

"Paul Christian" was the pseudonym of Jean-Baptist Pitois, who lived from 1811 to 1877, mainly in Paris. He was of some importance as a contributor to the occult tarot as initiated by Eliphas Levi.

Why this topic is of interest is that it suggests that the occult tarot of the 19th century may not have been the first to associate certain works and ideas to the tarot. Whether that means that there was an "underground stream" of tarot interpretation going from the late 15th century to the 19th, or merely that one 19th century occultist resurrected works not similarly appreciated since the Renaissance, I cannot say. But it fits with the correspondences I find between Etteilla's interpretations of the number cards and the Sola-Busca imagery of c. 1491, of Neopythagorean origin (http://neopythagoreanisminthetrot.blogspot.com/), and his appreciation of the "Zodiacus Vita" of 1535 Ferrara (http://zodiacusvita.blogspot.com/).

Two questions:

(a) What does the PMB 2nd artist have in common with the 19th century French occultist Paul Christian?

(b) What does the Schifanoia "room of the months" have in common with Christian's History of Magic?

Short answer: (a) Both the PMB 2nd artist and Christian used, in relation to the tarot, information in a book published by Johann Engel in 1488 containing allegorical depictions of the astrological degrees and decans as described in the work of a 13th century astrologer. The PMB 2nd artist used Engel's picture of the 26th degree of Libra as the design for his Strength card. Christian included a short version of Engel's list of degrees and decans in his 1863 L'Homme Rouge des Tuileries; in his 1870 []Histoire de la Magie[/i] he used the decans from that list in his astrological assignments to the tarot suit cards. He was the first, at least in print, to use the decans to interpret the tarot suit cards. I suspect that the reason he did so was that decans are a peculiarly Egyptian, or perhaps more properly, Greco-Egyptian, contribution to astrology, inspired by the 36 gods of the decans, or 10 day weeks, of the Egyptian calendar.

(b) Both the Schifanoia artists. c. 1470, and Christian, 1863 and 1870, used the same passage of the Astronomica of Marcus Manilius, a 1st century text lost until 1417 and generally ignored by astrologers after that. The Schifanoia used it in its association of gods to zodiacal sigms; Christian used it in his general presentation of astrology..

Another possible interpretation of the card is that it represents an image from the astrological tradition, so beloved of the Renaissance, including the courts of Pavia and Ferrara. When Iohannis Angelus published Petrus de Abano’s images of the decans and degrees in his Astrolabium Planum in 1494, he depicted the 26th degree of Libra as "Victor Belli", The Victor in War. The translations and original works of Petrus de Abano (1250-1316), are considered the sources of the astrological imagery in the Palazzo della Ragione in Padua and the Palazzo Schifanoia in Ferrara. Angelus' depiction of the symbol for 26 Libra is remarkably similar to the VS [Visconti-Sforza] card, both in the overall simplicity of its design and in such details as the shape of the man's garments and the lion's tail between its legs.

A problem is that most tarot researchers writing about the PMB 2nd artist cards think they were painted earlier than 1494. Ross himself suggests 1475 in his caption to the card. The 1494 is for the Venice edition. There was an earlier printing in Augsburg of 1488. But most people, except for the art historians, think that the card is earlier than 1488, too. Is it possible that the the images were already available in 1470, for use in the Schifanoia, as Ross suggests? The problem is that the decans of the Schifanoia are based on the Picatrix, not the Astrolabium. Compare Engel's illustrations of the decans of Aries, supplemented by Engel's text (of which the 1655 translation follows, with those of the Schifanoia (on top). (I have omitted Engel's pictures of the first two degrees, to which the words on both sides of the ram refer)

The fit of Engel's images and Latin with the words in English of "John Angelus" is good. But the fit of either to the Schifanoia images of the same decans is not very close. As we will see, the Schifanoia decans' fit to the Picatrix is much better.

2. The Schifanoia and the Picatrix

What the decans of the Schifanoia actually are based on is the Picatrix. This is a work originally in Arabic, translated into Castilian in the 13th century and then into Latin for the rest of Europe. The Castilian translation was done for Alfonso the Wise; the translator for the Latin has not been identified. Here is the Latin text of the Picatrix, describing the three decans of Aries (https://warburg.sas.ac.uk/pdf/fbh295b2205454.pdf, pp. 75-76). Above it I have put the three images as they appear in one of the Latin manuscripts (reproduced at http://www.engramma.it/eOS2/index.php?id_articolo=1244).

Here is my attempt to translate the Latin. It is not a language I have studied, so there are sure to be errors. I hope and expect that it is close enough for our purposes.

3. The first face Aries is in Mars, and there ascends, in the opinion of great men of this science, the image of a black man, of restlessness and great size, red eyes, and having a hand ascionem incidentem (?) holding a white cloth near him; And there is great good in it. And this is the face of strength, loftiness, and good, without shame. And this is its image.
[Start p. 76]
4. And in the second face of Aries is a woman wearing green [or youthful] clothes and separated leg. And this face is lofty, noble, and regal. And this is its image.

[P.127] and the third face of Aries is of a restless man, in his hands holding a golden bracelet and dressed in red clothing, wanting to do good but not being able to. And this face is of keenness and of subtle teaching and a thing of newness and usefulness and the like. And this is its image.

Here the fit to the Schifanoia decans is much closer than for the d'Albano text published by Engel.

Therefore it is said, that in the first face of Aries, ascendeth the image of a black man, standing and cloathed in a white garment, girdled about, of a great body, with reddish eyes, and great strength, and like one that is angry; and this image signifieth and causeth boldness, fortitude, loftiness and shamelesness; in the second face ascendeth a form of a woman, outwardly cloathed with a red garment, and under it a white, spreading abroad over her feet, and this image causeth nobleness, height of a Kingdom, and greatness of dominion: in the third face ariseth the figure of a white man, pale, with reddish hair, and cloathed with a red garment, who carrying on the one hand a golden Bracelet, and holding forth a wooden staff, is restless, and like one in wrath, because he cannot perform that good he would. This image bestoweth wit, meekness, joy and beauty:

This is obviously based on the same Latin text of the Picatrix that I have already quoted, or similar.

For the degrees, Agrippa cites "Petrus de Abano" but only gives a few of the images, without saying which degrees they are for. That of Hercules, as Ross notes, "giveth victory in war" (http://www.esotericarchives.com/agrippa ... htm#chap37), Agrippa says, without mentioning the lion. The Schifanoia does not have illustrations of the degrees.

Given that the Engel was not available until 1488, in an edition at Augsburg, it seems to me likely that the PMB Strength card was made after that, perhaps even after the 1494 Venice edition. Even if the text by Albano was available in 1470 Ferrara--which is speculation--the fit to the image is too close to have been based on just that text. Since most art historians (all, in fact, that I am aware of, most recently Bandera in "Quelle carte de triumphi che se fanno a Cremona": I tarocchi dei Bembo, 2013, p. 50) attribute the PMB 2nd artist cards to Amtonio Cigognara, a painter documented from 1480 to 1515, this conclusion should not be too shocking. Had Engel's images been available for use on the Schifanoia in Ferrara, one would expect them to have been used. Ross says that it is generally understood that they were used; if so, he has to say which decans in particular; Aries doesn't work.

3. The Schifanoia and Manilius's Astronomica

Besides the Picatrix, the Schifanoia's other main source is the Astronomica of Manilius, as Aby Warburg shoed in a famous lecture of 1912. Manilius wrote in Latin in the first century b.c. He associated a different Olympian god with each of the 12 signs of the zodiac. That is the explanation for why so many gods which are not planetary gods are at the top of the 12 sections of the walls in the room. For example, the presiding deity over Aries is Athena. Manilius says (pp. 117-119, Goold translation):

Pallas is protectress of the Ram, the Cytherean of the Bull, and Phoebus of the comely Twins; you, Mercury, rule the Crab and you, Jupiter, as well as the Mother of the Gods, the Lion; the Virgin with her sheaf belongs to Ceres, and the Balance to Vulcan who wrought it; bellicose Scorpion clings to Mars; Diana cherishes the hunter, a man to be sure, but a horse in his other half, and Vesta the cramped stars of Capricorn; opposite Jupiter Juno has the sign of Aquarius, and Neptune acknowledges the Fishes as his own for all that they are in heaven.

The Cytherean is Venus; the Mother of the Gods is Cybele.

Besides influencing the Schifanoia, it has been speculated that the prominence of these Olympians in Manilius might have contributed to the formation of the first known deck with a permanent fifth suit, that of Marziano in Milan c. 1420, inasmuch as Poggio, who had found the manuscript in a monastery near Basel in 1417, passed through Milan with the papal entourage in 1418.

There is the difficulty that Manilius's list is not exactly the same as Marziano's (compare at http://trionfi.com/martiano-da-tortona- ... -16-heroum). Notably, Vulcan is missing from Marziano, while Bacchus is missing from Manilius. In fact all 13 were members of the 12 at one time or another: it was held that Dionysus replaced Vesta, who preferred not to be at Olympus. Marziano, for his scheme to work, needed 4 virgins and 4 gods of pleasure. Both pleasure-loving Baccjis and virginal Vesta were useful for that purpose, but not dour and married Vulcan.

Besides the Schifanoia in Ferrara only one other fresco cycle was influenced by Manilius, the Room of the Winds at the Palazzo Te in Mantua, done for a ruler who was also the son of Isabella d'Este (Kristen Lippincott, p. 96 at http://www.kristenlippincott.com/assets ... graphy.pdf). In Florence, however, Ficino repeats Manilius's associations of gods with zodiacal signs in his famous De Amore, with important additions. There Ficino says (quoted by Lippincott on p. 103)

...Pallas, through Aries, teaches the art of weaving; Vulcan, through Libra, teaches bronze-working; and the others teach the rest of the arts.

So in the Schifanoia, we have, for Aries, Athena and her friends:

It was Ficino, in this work on Plato's Symposium published in 1484, who spelled out the gods' gifts to humanity in so many words. But someone (Ficino or some other) had already made both the connection to Manilius and that of the gods to the various arts, because Cybele is featured prominently at the Schifanoia in connection with Leo but not mentioned by Ficino (see Lippincott note 3).

After Agrippa these sources were not exactly lost (Manilius in particular was never lost, contrary to what Tyson says in his note 3 to Book 3, chapter LIV, of his edition of Agrippa), but also do not much influence the practice of astrology. Who would use a book that failed to discus the astrological role of the planets?

4. Paul Christian's use of Manilius and Engel

The French occultist and tarotist Paul Christian (1811-1877) repeats the same material in Manilius that we see in the Schifanoia and perhaps in Marziano, and the same material in Engel that we see in the PMB Strength card. But now it is in the context of cartomancy. Here is Christian on the protector gods, p. 507 of Histoire de la Magie:

This is essentially the same as Manilius. Christian could have gotten this by way of Agrippa, but Manilius himself was commented on by some astrologers directly, e.g. Scaliger. On the internet I found this book cover:

"Paul Christian" was the pseudonym of Jean-Baptist Pitois. The "Ch" stands for "Christian"; so apparently he adopted "Christian" as his first name, then reduced the "Pitois" to "P" (as his early works are by "P. Christian") and finally made it "Paul". The attached blurb refers us to L'Homme Rouge des Tuileries (https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-husvGUvX0wI/ ... eIntro.jpg). It also states that the images were in fact included in the Augsburg first edition, i.e. the edition in 1488, something I had been wondering about.

Christian also has a list of the 36 decans and their interpretations, among other things for use in interpreting the suit cards; this list of decans corresponds to to that of Engel and not Agrippa. In conformity with the Egyptian origin of the decans, he has an Egyptian-sounding name for the "protector god" for each. Whether these names have any historical basis is not clear, but since none of the sources have them, I'd guess he made them up.. He gave the list twice, once in his 1863 L'Homme Rouge des Tuileries and again in his 1870 L'Histoire de la Magie. Since they are not quite the same, I give them both. L'Homme Rouge pp. 139-141 (cut and pasted, since they are stuck in among the degrees), p. 507 of Histoire, and the English, p. 476 of History .

The principle about decans is that they follow the planet they are assigned to as well as the zodiacal sign under which they are subsumed. So in Aries the first decan is Mars, the second the Sun, and the third Venus. Anger befits Mars, nobility the Sun, and love of pleasure Venus. The translator has made a mistake in translating "supplesse" as "quickness"; it should be "flexibility", thus "flexible spirit" rather than "quick brain".

As for the 360 degrees, the English translation of "John Angelus", dated 1655, contains descriptions of both the 36 decans and the 360 degrees. This matches the 360 plus 36 given by Christian in his 1863 work, Homme Rouge des Tuilleries. Someone has actually put the list from that work online, in French; I invite you to compare "Angelus" (https://app.box.com/shared/znpd10kqft) ... ain_fr.pdf). Christian's is surely derived from Engel's.

Here are the 23rd through 26th degrees of Libra in Christian's 1863 list, below the pictures from Engel 1494 and the 1655 translation.

One thing is clear, that Christian's formulation does not derive from a version of Engel that had the pictures. The dragon becomes a serpent, symbol of cunning, and the peacock is now fanning his tail, unlike what is pictured.

Christian himself mentions neither Engel nor Manilius by name. I would guess that his immediate source had copied them out without giving the source.

It is a striking coincidence that Christian should have quoted both Manilius and Engel, both texts that had been part of the environment of the tarot in the decades around 1500 and then of little interest except by a few. Neither was well known in Christian's time. It took the scholar Aby Warburg, for example, to see the connection of Manilius to the Schifanoia. Engel was equally obscure.

5. Christian's use of Engel's decans in the context of Levi's Sefer Yetzirah

In his system of cartomancy, Christian takes from Engel only the decans, and then only in relation to the suit cards. He is thus the first tarot theorist to have used the decans in a presentation of the tarot. The Golden Dawn's later use of decans, although different, simply recycles Christian's idea (if in fact it is his and not someone else's before him). However I should point out that in Christian's "Egyptian" context, it is not cards he is thinking of, but rather metal plates with images engraved on them. To get a "reading", as they say, one does not shuffle and deal these plates, but rather uses Christian's system of astrology to get a set of numbers which then correspond to the numbers on the corresponding plates. I do not understand his system at all, but it is vaguely reminiscent of Etteilla's in his 4th Cahier. It depends on converting the person's name into numbers, by a special method of reduction, and looking for these numbers (plural, since a person has more than one name) in a table corresponding to the birth year. Years go in seven year cycles, starting with Saturn, ending with the Moon, and then repeating the process; he has a table that goes as far as 2016, beyond which he does not think it will be necessary (little did he know!).

To understand the principles behind Christian's astrological assignments, we have to first understand the Sefer Yetzirah's division of the 22 letters of the Hebrew letters into 3 mothers, 7 doubles, and 12 simples (never mind what these are!), and the astrological assignments for each of them as Levi understood them. The Sefer Yetzirah, a work from late antiquity, is a source that does not seem to have been well known to Renaissance Christians. Pico makes I think one reference to it; Lazzarelli makes important reference to a commentary on the Sefer Yetzirah but not the book itself. I find it highly unlikely that the Sefer Yetzirah had anything to do with the tarot during the 15th century, and probably not after that, until Eliphas Levi (birth name Alphonse Constant; despite the name change he was a devout if eccentric Christian) and his student Paul Christian (another ex-seminarian). One reason is that before Levi, if anyone tried to assign astrological entities in the order suggested by the Sefer Yetzirah, they would have come up with a rather poor fit. The first planet the Sefer Yetzirah gives is Saturn, for the letter Beth, according to Papus's translation (Qabbalah 1891, 1977 English translation pp. 119-120,) and all historical versions translated since (see Ariyeh Kaplan, Sefer Yetzirah, 1993, pp. 174-176, pp. 264, 275, 290 ). That assignment may possibly fit the Magician (if alpha is assigned to the Fool) or the Popess (if alpha is assigned to the Magician), but surely the next planet, Jupiter, assigned to Gimel, would fit neither the Popess nor the Empress. Nor would a suitable fit be found to other early orders: two of the first four cards were female, but all of the first four planets, Saturn through the Sun, were rather assertive males.

Levi changed all that by fiat. Beth in the Sefer Yetzirah was the Moon, he said, and Gimel was Venus. So if Beth, which did double duty as both the second letter of the alphabet and as the number 2 in Hebrew, was the Popess, it would all work out fine. Hopefully no one would look. There was at the time no French translation. (Westcott later was to pull the same trick for the Golden Dawn, but with a different set of assignments, again pulled out of what appears to have been thin air.)

Here is Levi's discussion of mother, double, and simple letters. He addressed all three, but only assigned specific letters to the doubles (below, from Clef des Mysteres, 1861, downloaded from Gallica; followed by Crowley's translation, p. 85, of Key of the Mysteries, online).

The cards are not mentioned per se, but since we know what letters Levi assigned to each of them, we can at least assign planets to the cards with the seven double letters assigned to them. The Arabic numbers are what correspond to the ordinal placement of the letters in the alphabet (e.g. Aleph is first, so = 1). We have

These assignments do fit the corresponding cards, even if they have nothing to do with the Sefer Yetzirah's actual assignments. That Levi gave no astrological assignments to the mother letters carries over into Christian's not giving the corresponding cards any either. But for the 12 simples, there are too many to ignore; also, they fit more easily into the three dimensional map of the cosmos. Christian simply uses those in the Sefer Yetzirah as then available, starting with Aries and ending with Pisces.

At one time the Sefer Yetzirah was thought to be very ancient, from the time of Abraham, if not by that patriarch himself. If so, it could reasonably be thought to have been the way the Egyptians connected their 22 golden plates, on which the tarot images were inscribed, to the elements, planets, and zodiacal signs of astrology. Of course the whole idea is absurd, because there is no evidence for the tarot before the 15th century, and the Sefer Yetzirah was written after Egypt was Chistianized, but let that not stop us.

Below is Christian's list of astrological assignments to tarot subjects (gold plates, that is: he never mentions cards) for the birth year of Saturn, the first birth year in the seven year cycle; I take it from pp. 495-496 of Histoire, 1870. It will be in two parts, starting with the majors. For them, he tells us, the assignments are the same in every birth year. On the right in red I have put a translation of the card's name and the associated planet or sign of the zodiac. On the left I have put the type of letter it is for that card, starting with alpha for the Magus. Then the planet or zodiac can be that of the associated letter in the Sefer Yetzirah, using Levi's version of its assignments of double letters to planets. There are no assignments for the mother letters.

Then we come to the suit cards. Here on the right I have translated the name of the card and the main planet or zodiacal sign assigned. On the left I have given, for the number cards, the type of letter pertaining to that card (Egyptian being the same as Hebrew), and for the court cards the season and the zodiacal sign pertaining to that season. I will explain more fully after giving the list. Except for the planets added as an additional "influence", this list, too, is the same for all the birth years. I have no idea what rationale, if any, he had for these planets and their assignments. They are in most cases not the planet typically associated with that decan.

For the Kings (which he calls "maitres", masters), Christian is using the 4 brightest stars of the zodiacal constellations, as indicated by their associated signs (I get this point from Decker, Depaulis, and Dummett, Wicked Pack of Cards p. 211). For Leo the star would be Regulus. Then for the rest of the court cards (Mistress, Combattant, and Slave) he uses the zodiacal signs associated with each of the four seasons. For scepters, it is the spring signs.

Then for the number cards he repeats the sequence of planetary and zodiacal associations that he has already used for the triumph sequence, using either Arcana I-X (in Scepters and Blades) or Arcana XI-XX (in Cups and Shekels). Two of the Arcana have no astrological association, where Arcana I and XIII would be (see his list for the Majors). Instead of using the zodiacal signs over again, after having used them once for the major arcana, he is using their decans instead. In the case of planets, there is no equivalent substitute, so for them he simply repeats the appropriate planet.

For the majors, Christian's assignments, and lack of them, are repeated faithfully by Papus, in both of his books on the tarot (Tarot des Bohemiens, 1899, and Le Tarot Divinitoire, 1910), and Robert Falconnier, 1896, who provided actual cards done in an Egyptianized style done for him by the artist Maurice Otto Wegener. For the minors, however, Papus used the spring decans for the 1-9 of Batons, the summer ones to Cups, and so on. The King, Queen, and Knight then took the seasonal zodiacal signs themselves, while the Pages and 10s were transitions to the next series and left unassigned (Tarot of the Bohemians pp. 235-237 of Waite translation).

The advantage of Christian's system for the suit cards, as opposed to the Golden Dawn's, is that the minors reflect on a lower level what is already in the majors, which in turn reflects the yet higher level array of the Sefer Yetzirah, which in turn is derivative from the 10 sefiroth. Unlike the Golden Dawn's versions, it does so in a way that does not involve seeing the majors as paths between sefiroth and the minors as the sefiroth themselves. The minors, and especially the number cards, are clearly derivative from the majors and not the other way around. It at least has that to be said for it.

But what a particular order of elements, planets and zodiacal signs, as generated by the Hebrew alphabet in around 600 a.d., has to do with a particular sequence of Christian allegorical cards generated in the 15th century, not generated with it in mind, is something I have yet to understand. In my opinion, if the tarot is a mystery, the Sefer Yetzirah is one of the biggest red herrings, i.e. false leads, in its solution.

Mike,
Besides the Schiafonaia, your subject is ostensibly the 2nd artist PMB replacement cards but your sole focus seems to be the Strength card matching the Angelus decan "The Victor in War." Are you implying all of the 2nd artist PMB trumps are related to decans? I don't see how likely that is when one of them is Temperance, which is a straight forward virtue.

I also don't find the PMB strength card needing Angelus images, just the original text, given the historical context of Milanese-Venetian relations, especially the latter also using the lion as a primary symbol in a victor in war context, but not as the conquered (I've provided this many times, but here it is again - the lion rampant versus cowed in defeat, with a similarly raised weapon over it, but this time in concert with the lion's attack):

Are you implying all of the 2nd artist PMB trumps are related to decans?

No, not at all. Also, the Strength card is related to a degree, not a decan.

I also don't find the PMB strength card needing Angelus images, just the original text, given the historical context of Milanese-Venetian relations, ...

Well, the similarity of the PMB Strength card with the 1488 Augsburg, 1494 Venice, image is strong. Yes, it could be coincidence that the same pose was suggested by the text, "man beating a lion". However the similarity is so close that a mutual influence is more likely than not. Since the deck was a private affair, it wouldn't have been the card influencing the book.

Also, it is not clear to me how familiar the de Abano text was among 15th century artists before Angelus's publciation. It is said that the repainting of the Hall of the Months at Padua used de Abano. But unlike Giotto's original (destroyed 1420) the repainting didn't use anywhere near all 360 of the degrees. Perhaps they worked from copies of some of Giotto's designs, without accessing the source. I seem to remember reading somewhere that the text was part of de Abano's Conciliator. It was published in 1472 Mantua, which is of course very close to Cremona and does not rule out manuscript copies there earlier. But someone would have to know where to look in that rather long work.

I do not see much of a match-up to to the League of Cambrai allegorical figure with the sword. She has her sword raised against an enemy facing her, as though ready to attack. The card and the Angelus have the club raised in back of them, so as to gain momentum on the swing, designed to inflict injury by clubbing something close at hand. rather than piercing as a result of a lunge forward.

I don't think the use of Angelus has anything to do with Milan-Venice relations. Its being published in Venice in addition to Augsburg would merely seem to make it more available to Milan/Cremona/Ferrara, given that Venice was closer. The Venetian lion, as you say, is a triumphant lion, not a cowed lion. That may be an intentional dig at Venice.

Everyone has said that the 6 added cards are by the same artist. I see no reason to doubt that. I see nothing tying any of the other cards to a particular time, other than the style, which seems Schifanoia-influenced. But even that is not certain. All the art historians name Cigognara as the most likely artist for the 6; the 1490s are safely within his period of activity which starts around 1480. Also, other PMB clones were probably done around that time.

Whoever did the 6 cards would have to have known the first-artist designs and dimensions--at least in general--so as to fit with the existing cards, as the dimensions are pretty much the same and they capture the same figure to background proportions and the "precipice" motif at the bottoms (in the case of the World card, at the bottom of the bubble). A match for the backs would not be necessary, because by that time I would suppose that the added cards were never intended to make it possible to actually play the game.

I now have the 1863 version of Christian's tarot descriptions, in the edition of L'Homme Rouge des Tuileries (originally 1863) reprinted in 1977. Instead of the Egyptian initiation of Histoire de la Magie (1870) framing the 22 teachings, the frame-story is rather more complex. It is in a manuscript that is inserted into the narrative of a novel describing, in conversations between characters, its history and use; that narrative in turn is framed by the author's introduction and an epilogue, the latter relating yet another prediction by means of the manuscript (this time to Napoleon III, as opposed to Napoleon I). Not only that, but within the supposed manuscript, the account of the cards, now 78 gold plates rather than 22 frescoes, is introduced by Pythagorean and Kabbalist teachings, and followed by the astrology needed to make use of the gold plates.

The astrology, i.e. what comes after the 78, is what in History of Magic is put at the end of the book. Some of the introductory material is in History of Magic, too, both before and after the initiation section, but still presented as Egyptian teachings. Since I haven't dealt with this introductory matter yet in this thread, I will do so now, with an eye to both versions (1863 and 1870) of the wording.

Almost immediately the "manuscript" presents us with a diagram (second below), which he calls the "Rose-Cross." The word, at least, goes back to medieval times. Christian's use of it seems to me to be inspired by something such as Robert Fludd's depiction in his Summum Bonum of 1629 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Fludd; the motto is "The Rose Gives Honey to the Bees").

How they are similar, it seems to me, is that in Christian's there are successive series of rose petal-like arcs, or rather figures made from pairs of arcs, as many as four such figures. The first, going away from the center, are just inside the circle numbered "6". There are 8 of them. The second, also 8, are about halfway from that circle to the circumference of the big circle. The third, also 8 are just inside the big circle. The fourth are the 8 circles going from the center to the circumference of the big circle. In Christian's Here are the two roses side by side.

There are of course several differences. Fludd has 7 petals per circular row, whereas Christian has 8. He also has 6 such circular rows, whereas Christian has at most 4. But the most notable difference is that in Fludd's, the cross is below the Rose; in Christian's the cross is inside the big circle; it consists of two lines passing through the center; one is bounded by the letters "I" and "N"; the other is bounded by "R" and "I". These of course spell "INRI", the famous initial letters of "Jesus King of the Jews" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus,_King_of_the_Jews). But Eliphas Levi had suggested an occult significance for these initials in Rituel et Dogme de l'Haute Magie, 1856 (pp. 58-60 of Greer-Mikituk translation). For Christian the letters correspond to four Egyptian ones, each standing for a different idea. Below is my translation, with some comments of mine in brackets.

1st JAMIN (1), symbolizes the active creative principle, and the manifestation of power which fertilizes substance [i.e. matter].
2nd NAIN (N), symbolizes the passive principle, mold of all the forms that the substance assumes. [In Histoire he leaves out the last four words.]
3rd. IRON (R), symbolizes the eternal transformation of the modes of life. [In Histoire he says, "...symbolizes the union of these two principles and the perpetual transformation of created things.]
4th. JAMIN (1), symbolizes again, by its return, the active creative principle to which the creative force emanating from it is constantly rising. [In Histoire, it is "...symbolizes again the divine creative principle, signifying that the creative force which is emanated from it ceaselessly returns to it and springs from it again", in the published English translation.]

The sequence of these four hierograms expresses the idea contained in the DIVINE UNITY, and their circular evolution: INRI .. NRI ... NRI ... etc., represents the perpetual movement that creates the infinity of the possible.

It seems to me that Christian has in mind God, but also man and perhaps any life-form. It is a series he elaborates further in describing the first four major arcana. They are the steps in the creation of anything. The Magician is the creative principle, the High Priestess the passive principle, the Empress the union of the two, and the Emperor the active principle again, on a new level, higher than the first.

Christian goes on:

The same idea is represented by the numbers of the four terms of the creation of all things: 1, the creative spirit; 2, matter; 3, union of spirit with matter, and 4, the form created.

This is simply a restatement of the previous, except that the 4th is considerably simpler. I have no idea where the earlier statement of the 4th idea, in

In this form I recognize it as the dialectic of form and matter characteristic of either Plato or Aristotle, the only difference being that Plato held that the "creative spirit" operates from pre-existing forms of which the spirit, whether "demiurge" or human, holds copies. Aristotle may have thought that the forms were not pre-existing, but had a real existence only when they enformed matter, i.e. the fourth step. In the Renaissance, however, many thought that Aristotle was not disagreeing with Plato, but merely concerned with different issues.

It also bears some similarity to Hegel: thesis, antithesis, synthesis, new thesis. I think Hegel actually left out the "synthesis" step. It went: thesis, antithesis, antithesis overcoming thesis to produce a new thesis. However Hegel was associated with "synthesis" all the same..

This account parallels Papus's discussion of the Hebrew letters "Yod He Vau He" in his 1889 Tarot des Bohemiens. The only problem is that with YHVH the second letter repeats, whereas in Christian's it is the first letter. YHVH emphasizes the material aspect, INRI the formal. It seems to me that it is the formal aspect that continues the series on a higher level. So Christian's formulation makes more sense.

Next:

The sequence of these numbers produces the symbolic decade: 1+2+3+4=10, which are the circles of the Rose-Cross.

"Circles" refers to the diagram, of course, although they are actually not simply circles, but more like spheres, because they have "length, width, and depth". He has a sentence naming them:

GOD, SUPREME POWER (1), balanced by PERPETUALLY ACTIVE INTELLIGENCE (2), ABSOLUTE WISDOM (3), INFINITE LOVE (4) and ABSOLUTE JUSTICE (5), is the resplendence of all BEAUTY (6) emerging and radiating from the hearth of all life, to REIGN (7) ETERNALLY (8) on the works that its UNIVERSAL FERTILITY. (9) manifests and multiplies to infinity in the circle of RELATIVE OR CREATED BEINGS (10).

The capitalized words are of course the ten sefiroth of the Kabbalah. But there are a few changes. For one, the 2nd and 3rd have switched places compared to the usual order, and some of the names are slightly different. This is the Egyptian version, after all, before the Jewish one.

In the diagram, most of the numbers are even put on the circles in a way that suggests the Kabbalists' sefirotic "tree". The exception is number 6, but that could just as easily been put lower down. It is not clear to me where circle 10 is supposed to be. On the Kabbalist's tree, of course, it goes at the bottom, below 9. But there is no such place on this "rose"; in fact, the number 10 does not appear at all. Later (p. 86) he uses the label "CERCLE EXTÉRIEUR" for the 10th circle. Whether that means the large circle enclosing all the others, or a circle exterior to the diagram, I do not know.

It seems to me that we could imagine these circles as representing the cosmos and beyond as contemplated on a moonless night in the Northern Hemisphere north of the 45th parallel. The stars all revolve around a single point approximately where the North Star is: that is the direction in which Heaven lies, on the axis around which the stars turn, but extending beyond the bowl of the sky. The sefiroth also lie beyond the sky, projecting their energies down onto the zodiacal signs and planets. The ecliptic, where the zodiacal constellations and the planets revolve, is one ring around the axis. We can imagine others, both closer to North and further away. These would be like the petals of a rose, forming concentric circles around the center. Hell, I suppose, would be beyond the south pole of this globe.

There is a nice example of this type of schema--not including Heaven or Hell, but otherwise close--in the Louvre, originally from Ptolemaic Egypt (it is the summer sky in 50 b.c., the websites say), namely the Denderah astronomical ceiling (above). The French ripped it out of its temple and brought it to Paris in 1821. Here the hippopotamus, the thigh bone (or whatever it is), and a few dogs are the first ring. The ecliptic, with the zodiacal signs, are the second. The decans are the third. I do not know what the symbols outside the sky map represent, perhaps degrees, although there don't seem to be 360 of them. The figures and large letters (The Egyptian for INRI, of course) outside the map make it even closer to Christian's second version of the Rose-Croix, in Histoire.

For each of his smaller "circles", Christian says (pp. 84-85 of Homme Rouge), there is a "hierarchy" that transmits the divine influence from the divine source in its ten aspects to the zodiacal signs and planets. These are the (1) Seraphim, (2) Cherubim, (3) Thrones (4), Dominations (5), Powers (6), Virtues (7), Principalities (8), Archangels, and Angels (9), of pseudo-Dionysius (in Histoire, p. 67, he actually names "Dionysius the Areopagite" as his source). For the tenth, he does not give a hierarchy, unless it is those of "religion" in our world..

For Christian these "hierarchies" are neither Jewish nor Christian, but Egyptian, but with precisely the same names. These transmit the divine influence to the heavens of, respectively, the first moved (1) , the fixed stars (2), Saturn (3), Jupiter (4), Mars (5), the Sun (6), Venus (7), Mercury (8), the Moon (9), plus, for the beings of the last circle, the "natural world", apparently not part of the Rose-Cross itself.

Each of these heavens has an "intelligence" which transmits an aspect of the divine essence to what is below. The Seraphim through the first moved influence "all beings". The Cherubim through the fixed stars imprint the ideas which precede the forms. The Thrones through Saturn and its genius Oriphael bring the dead to the bosom of God. Jupiter has its genius Zachariel, who presides over the government of created forms. Mars has its governor Samael, who presides over the chastisement of beings. The Sun has its genius Michael, who presides over "the generation of all things through the fecundation of the elements". Venus has Anael, who presides over "the harmonies of vegetable nature". Mercury has Raphael, who presides over "the generation of animals". The Moon has Gabriel, who presides over "the increase and decrease of all sublunary beings". Finally, in the natural world the "divine essence communicates to us by religion and speaks to us by the voice of conscience."

In addition, below the seven geniuses of the planets are a second hierarchy, composed of the 36 decans, in groups of three presiding over 10 degrees of the 30 degrees assigned to each of the signs of the zodiac. Below them, as additional assistants, are the 360 "intelligences" of the degrees themselves.

I am not sure where all this comes from. Part of it may be Christian's own invention.The correspondences between sefiroth, hierarchies, and heavens can be found in Agrippa's Three Books on Occult Philosophy, Book 2, Chapter 13, "Of the Number Ten", written in the 1530s (http://www.esotericarchives.com/agrippa/agripp2b.htm in particular the table entitled "The Scale of the Number Ten". Below is my scan from Tyson's edition of the 18th century English translation (if this is too small for your eyes, try https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-c07CtxJArxE/ ... 5265a1.jpg).

It would be of interest, too, to know where Agrippa got his assignments of sefiroth to planets. Pico della Mirandola in his 900 Theses held that the seven planets belonged to the seven lower sefiroth, starting with Jupiter at the 4th sefira and ending with the Moon at the 10th. Saturn went in the 7th spot (Conclusiones 11>48); however he began that thesis by saying "Whatever other Cabalists say...", suggesting that there were also other views. In the 17th century, Kircher followed Pico, except for putting Saturn in the 8th position, as can be seen in the "tree of life" he produced, reproduced in several places on the Web..

The only source I know before Agrippa that assigns Saturn to the 3rd sefira is Pico's friend Yohanan Alemanno, in the 1490s (Moshe Idel, Kabbalah in Italy, p. 188 at https://archive.org/stream/MosheIdelKab ... y_djvu.txt). Among Florentine Jewish Kabbalists he may have started the tradition reflected in Agrippa. It also may have existed before Alemanno. If so, it is not likely much earlier, because despite diligent search I do not find a Saturn-Binah connection in the Zohar. In its "supernal palaces" section, moreover, it is clear that the lowest level, or palace, is associated with the Moon.

It is perhaps because Saturn was associated with wisdom that Christian made Wisdom the 3rd rather than 2nd sefira. Then, with Saturn linked to this 3rd safira, the 10th is freed to correspond to "the natural world" rather than to the Moon.

After the heavens, Christian starts to veer from Agrippa.. Christian's "geniuses" correspond to Agrippa's "ruling angels" (i.e. Archangels), but some of their names and which heavens they belong to are different. And what is below them is completely different. I do not recognize most of Christian's assignments.

Levi has assignments for some of the planets (Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie, trans. by J. Greer and M. A. Mikituk, Doctrine and Ritual of High Magic,, pp. 298-299), but they are quite conventional: Jupiter for domination, Mars for force, Mercury for occult science, eloquence, commerce, etc., the Moon for alterations.

Yet it is possible that there is some Renaissance source, as Botticelli's La Primavera shows Venus presiding over a world that, besides the Graces, is eminently vegetable. Also, the Poimandres, the first book of the Corpus Hermeticum, speaks of Luna as governing "increase and decrease". Another bit I recognize is that of the genius of the zodiac being the transformer of ideas from above into forms in things below; that is found in the Latin Aesclepius, also part of the Corpus Hermeticum (I get this from Stephen Gersh, "Theological Doctrines of the Latin Asclepius", p. 139, in Neoplatonism and Gnosticism, 1984, at https://books.google.com/books?id=WSbrL ... c&f=false). This book mentions, on pages not available for viewing, the 36 decans as well, so probably other things derive from some Hermetic or Neoplatonic source. The milieu is definitely hermetic. I will have to make a trip to the library this week.

All of these entities except those pertaining to the 10th circle are included in the Rose-Cross. The 10th circle, Christian says, is the "exterior" one. That one has 78 compartments, and the manuscript will give us the keys. Each has an associated Egyptian letter, a symbolic title, and a hieroglyph, i.e. a symbolic image. They correspond, of course, to the tarot deck. Most of the "hieroglyphs" also have an associated astrological entity or entities, one or both of a planet and either a zodiacal sign or a decan of that sign.

From this introduction he proceeds directly to the 78 "compartments". He begins each one with a characterization in each of three "worlds", the "divine world", the "intellectual world", and the "physical world". The "physical world" must be the "natural world" of "men and things" which the various planetary geniuses govern. The "intellectual world" would be that of the "intelligences". I am not sure how high that goes: certainly as far up as the heavens. The Seraphim, Cherubim, etc., down to the Angels, would seem to be in the divine world, on the other hand, they might be considered "intelligences". I would imagine that the sefiroth and above would be in the divine world.

There are three intelligible worlds, which correspond to each other through a hierarchical analogy: the natural or physical world, the spiritual [or mental] or metaphysical world, and the divine or religious world.

And a couple of pages further (p. 53):

All words have three meanings, all actions a threefold result, all forms a threefold idea, because the absolute corresponds from world to world with its forms. Every resolution of human will modifies nature, interests philosophy, and is written in heaven.

By "philosophy", read primarily "hermetic philosophy". This is clear further on (p. 55):

All of science rests on three principles, just like a syllogism with three terms. There are also three distinct classes, or three original and natural ranks, among men, who are all called to climb from the lowest to the highest rank. The Hebrews call these series or degrees of progress of the spirit, Assiah, Yetzirah, and Briah. The Gnostics, who were the Christian Cabalists, called them Hyle, Psyche and Gnosis; the supreme circle was called Atziluth by the Hebrews and Pleroma by the gnostics.

Here Assiah means "making", Yetzirah means "formation", Briah means "creation", and Atziluth means "emanation". I would think that Assiah corresponds to Christian's "physical world". Yetzirah would be Christian's "intellectual world". Atziluth is clearly in Christian's "divine world". I am not sure where Briah, the created world of the Seraphim, etc., would go, whether "intellectual" or "divine".

In Histoire de la Magie he seems to have realized that he had omitted defining the three worlds. He says the following (translation p. 19, original pp. 20-21).

There is one error in translation. In the 5th line from the bottom: "suffers and links" is not right. The French is "subit ou enchaine"; so the proper translation would be "submits to or enchains".

(But what then am I? A thing that thinks. What is that? A thing that doubts, understands, affirms, denies, is willing, is unwilling, and also imagines and has sensory perceptions.)

For "veut", the literal translation would be "wishes". For the last word, "sent", "senses" would be the literal.

This definition does not include anything in the physical world, for example arms and legs, for those could all, in so far as he is certain of things, have been put into his mind by an evil demon. Only his thoughts, intentions, decisions, and perceptions remain as essentially himself.

If this is Christian's definition of "intellectual world", it is not a Renaissance conception, but from the century that followed, the 17th. It has nothing in common with ancient Greek thought either. It is also hard to fit with what Christian said in his earlier book. Is the "intellectual world" purely human, or does it include the "intelligences"? If the latter, what is left for the "divine world", aside from the god beyond concepts, the "En Sof" of the Kabbalists? But perhaps the sefiroth are not intelligent beings themselves, but the aspects of the divine that are imparted to the intelligences.

Another problem is that if the "intellectual world" is the same as the world of the human subject, does that include the consciousness that devotes itself unthinkingly but wholeheartedly to the pleasure of the senses and the avoidance of pain? Somehow that person belongs in Levi's "hylic" realm, of the lowest class of human beings.

For his part, Papus, in Tarot des Bohemiens, 1889, simply continued Christian's way of drawing the distinctions in Histoire. He called the three worlds the divine world, the human world, and the physical world, without further elaboration.

Hopefully Chistian's distinction among the three worlds will be clearer in the 22 descriptions that follow, each corresponding to a tarot "major arcanum".

So far, as far as sources, I still need something earlier than Levi for the "three worlds", and some source, also, for the assignments that Christian makes to the various archangels in the world below. I would also like something more than Fludd's picture as precedent for Christian's "rose-cross". If anyone has any ideas, please post something.

Again, there remains the task of looking at Christian's 22 characterizations of the "major arcana". I have attended to the frame but not what is in the frame, whether as steps in an initiation (Histoire) or as "dogme de la morale primitive" (Homme p. 276: principles of the original morality). But I've said enough for one post.